Bitcoin 8600GT

So you’ve heard of Bitcoin and you’d like to try this whole mining thing out but aren’t sure where to start. Well this guide is designed to get absolute beginners mining Bitcoin. You’ll need a desktop computer with a decent GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), preferably one by Radeon. You’ll also need to have a Bitcoin wallet set up. If you don’t yet have a Bitcoin wallet I suggest reading our Getting Started With Bitcoin post . It goes over the basics of Bitcoin and how to set up a wallet. Let’s get started.

Mining Basics

Mining is the process of using your computer’s processing power to process transactions for the Bitcoin network. By allowing your computer to do a certain amount of cryptographic work you are rewarded with some Bitcoin.

Originally Bitcoin miners just used their computer’s CPUs (Central Processing Unit) like an intel i7 to do this work. Eventually a few users figured out how to get much better results by using GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) by installing some special software. Most users now mine in pools as the chance of finding a Bitcoin block (A group of 25 coins) is very low for most casual miners.

There have been some hardware progressions over the last year in Bitcoin mining that are beginning to make GPU mining less profitable in terms of the amount of Bitcoin earned from GPU mining. However, GPU mining is still considered profitable and may remain so for a little bit still. The first new hardware to be used were FPGAs which used less energy than GPUs. However, the biggest improvement has come with the development of ASICs for Bitcoin. Our Bitcoin ASIC Roundup gives a brief introduction to ASICs if you’re interested.

To mine Bitcoin you’ll need to download some specialized software. This tutorial covers a program called GUI miner used on Windows 7 and 8. We’ll also show you how to sign up for a mining pool in order to get a steady payout for your contributions.

Mining pools came about after the difficulty in Bitcoin mining became very high. Today mining pools allow groups of users to pool their mining resources making it more likely that the group, and thus the individual, finds a block. The mining pool will then pay each miner a portion of that block corresponding to how much they had contributed (There are multiple ways of calculating this).

Downloading GUI Miner

GUI miner is a basic Bitcoin mining program that also works well for beginners. Unlike many of the other miners available, it has a front end (GUI – Graphic User Interface). There are more advanced mining programs but they often require users to be acquainted with the command line so we won’t cover them here.

The link below is the Github download for GUIminer for Windows. For other versions and operating systems check this .